Nar Shaddaa Nightlife
by Lord Zeuss
Summary: LSF Exile, KOTOR 2. Jedi Exile Kuryama Nari and Atton Rand must hide in a nightclub to escape a mercenary trap.


Nar Shaddaa Nightlife

Written by Lord Zeuss

Kuryama Nari panted as she and Atton ran wildly through the streets of Nar Shaddaa, yelling at pedestrians to get out of the way as they tore across the city, a team of mercenaries in hot pursuit. She suspected Vogga the Hutt of double-crossing them, but that didn't matter; right now they simply had to escape.

* * *

_Twenty minutes ago..._

Vogga the Hutt was finally willing to open trade negotiations over supplying fuel to Telos. Despite merely being the representative, Vogga wanted Kuryama present for the opening of discussions - the Hutt had been cryptic but mentioned credits, and she was in a particular credit deficit at the moment.

She decided to bring Atton along. He needed some time off the _Hawk_ or he said he was going to go insane. Besides, he was a good judge of who-is-going-to-screw-you-over and who-isn't.

They pushed through the throngs to the Hutt's place, where a pair of Trandoshan guards waited.

"_Vogga does not allow visitors to carry weapons,_" the lizard-like aliens informed Kuryama as they stood blocking the entrance.

"I don't like this. He sure didn't seem to have any problem with us carrying whatever we wanted last time we were here," Atton worried.

Kuryama shrugged. "It's not like we'll be defenseless without lightsabres, Atton."

"Oh, right. Jedi. Stupid of me to forget. If we get into a firefight you can just Force-persuade everyone to stop shooting at us!" Atton grumbled sarcastically.

"Besides, I don't sense anything. And neither does Kreia." Indeed, the old crone had been uncharacteristically silent for several days. Kuryama didn't mind one bit; Kreia's constant telepathic reminders were annoying and distracting.

"Okay, fine. But don't say I didn't warn you," Atton relented as he started surrendering his weapons. Kuryama did the same.

Being on Nar Shaddaa - where you can lose just about anything if you aren't careful enough - Kuryama had not taken along her own unique lightsabre; she had settled for a run-of-the-mill generic blue-bladed sabre of the type that Bao-Dur was handing out to the crew like candy. Even so, handing it over to a total stranger still felt undeniably wrong.

When the Trandoshan guards were satisfied Kuryama and Atton had relinquished all their weapons they led the way into Vogga's base.

The mercenaries jumped them just inside the base. The two Trandoshan guards were dead in a heartbeat. Possessing no weapons on either of their persons, Kuryama and Atton did the only thing they could do; they ran.

There were about nine or ten of them. Rodians, Twi'leks, and Humans; they fired the occasional warning shot over Atton's and her head, sending the crowd running in fear as well, creating more confusion.

Kuryama's mind raced. How had she been unable to sense the trap? She and Atton had shared a bad feeling about it, but it was as if her Force perception was blind.

That meant that one of the mercenaries was a Force user. Not good.

They were headed the wrong way to get back to the _Hawk,_ the mercenaries were chasing them away from the docks and into the dingiest parts of the city. Defying the rest of the city to look more decrepit and rundown, the sector through which Kuryama and Atton found themselves running was one of the dirtiest, ugliest city zones either of them had ever been in before. The lower cities of Coruscant and Taris were shining jewels compared to the dregs of the Smuggler's Moon. Poorly maintained neon signs flashed at street-corners, marking clubs, whorehouses, and drug distro' centers. Drifters and prostitutes hung about in dark alleys while figures in long trench-coats carrying heavy weaponry slunk about passing drugs around. The crowds had thinned, allowing Kuryama and Atton to run uninhibited through the streets, past pedestrians who never gave them a second glance.

The mercenaries still hadn't given up the chase and stayed hot on their heels, blasters at the ready, now firing freely, stray shots peppering the street and nearby buildings. If this kept up there would be a very one-sided firefight on the streets, and the mercenaries would collect on her bounty with her charred, smoking corpse.

They had to elude the mercenaries and whatever Force users might be among them; no small task now that they had already tasted the blood of their prey. Running was only a delaying tactic; one that was losing its effectiveness with each passing moment as the crowds got seedier and the mercenaries more bold in their blaster fire. Sooner or later their time was going to run out.

Kuryama considered lashing out with her Force powers, but quickly rejected the idea. To do such a thing while fleeing would be virtually impossible, as the concentration required far exceeded that which she could divert from her task at hand. Another option was waylaying some passersby and appropriating whatever weapons they might be carrying in order to retaliate against the mercenaries. This, too, was unacceptable. As much as she hated to admit it, such an action could have undesirable and unforeseeable consequences; it would be robbery, after all. So she disregarded that idea.

Atton's stamina, as well as her own, was flagging. She needed to find a solution to their quandary and quickly.

As the neon signs flashed by, a sudden plan occurred to her. If a Force user was blinding her perception, perhaps she could do the same to them. She just needed to get them into a place where one's Force perception was easily clouded.

A nearby sign proclaimed _Jaraya's Cantina & Kek Bar_; a nightclub. It would do perfectly.

Kuryama grabbed Atton's arm and yanked him off the street, towards the entrance to the sleazy monument to hedonism and lust. Flashing lights, sparkling mirror balls, and deafening music leaked from the doorway.

In a mad dash, Kuryama and Atton ran straight into the Twi'lek bouncer standing out front. He started yelling at them; alerting the pursuing mercenaries. Kuryama took one look at the Twi'lek, made a quick calculation, and lashed out with her elbow, catching the blue-skinned man across the temple and knocking him out cold.

"Atton, quick! Grab his shoulders!" Kuryama shouted to Atton as she grabbed the bouncer's legs and they pulled him into the club. Taking a quick look around, she saw people taking notice. "You didn't see anything," she told them, waving her hand as she passed a mild Force persuasion over them. The patrons, already very distractible, were effortlessly persuaded to look at the rest of what the seedy establishment had to offer and forget the minor altercation at the entrance.

The Human and Twi'lek dancers in the dressing room jumped as Kuryama and Atton burst in, carrying the insensate club bouncer. Seeing the women's faces, and realizing that they might bolt at any second, Kuryama hurriedly called forth more Force persuasion.

With a sheepish smile, she waved her hand inconspicuously and gave an excuse; "Sorry. Just a little misunderstanding with our friend here. Go back to what you were doing."

She was successful, and the women turned back to their drawers. Without pausing to congratulate herself, or even explain to Atton what was going on, Kuryama spotted a red-haired Human woman still in street clothes who would do nicely. Leaving Atton with the insensible Twi'lek bouncer she approached the dancer and tapped her on the back to get her attention.

The woman turned around. She was remarkably beautiful. Kuryama's gut wrenched. How did such a precious soul end up in this cesspool? She gave Kuryama a sweet smile. "I'm sorry, you'll have to wait your turn, sweetie. I'm on shift in a few minutes, but I can dance for you in private later tonight if you want."

Hiding her disgust, Kuryama smiled back, and waved her hand; "You don't want to dance tonight."

The woman's smile turned to an expression of confusion and compliance.

"I-I don't want to dance tonight," she answered.

"You want to go home and rethink your life," Kuryama persisted.

"I want to go home and rethink my life."

_Consequences. Eat your heart out, Atris. _Kuryama thought. The poor girl would be better off wherever she might end up than on a stage, selling her body to every lowlife on Nar Shaddaa.

As the redhead left, Atton came over with a dozen questions written on his face.

"K', what the kek is going on?" He asked desperately.

Kuryama ignored him and started pulling off her boots. "Get the bouncer's outfit. You're wearing it."

Grumbling, Atton started taking off the Twi'lek's club uniform.

Stowing her boots in the redhead's bottom drawer, Kuryama jerked free the sash at her waist and peeled out of her gray Jedi robes.

That got Atton's attention.

"Whoa, hey! Kury', what the kek are you doing?" Atton's expression was priceless.

Kuryama maintained her business-like manner. "I'm disguising myself. I can't exactly pass myself off as a club security guard. Now unless you want to be my dancing partner, get the bouncer's uniform and disguise yourself. We don't exactly have a lot of time!"

Atton went red in the face and got back to removing the guard's uniform.

For the first time, Kuryama was thankful for the terrible ordeal that had been her exile. Before, she would have balked at the length to which she was now going to elude the mercenaries. She never would have even considered it. But in her exile she had forced to stoop to even lower depths just to see another wretched day of the same desperate living. In comparison to what she had gone through, the idea of dressing as whore and dancing in front of a crowd of hedonistic men was extreme, but not unbearable. Besides, she hoped the mercenaries would be gone before she was supposed to take someone's shift.

Atton found a closet and stuffed the unconscious Twi'lek inside. He had pulled the guard's uniform over his street clothes; they were not the perfect fit, but would fool the type of person who frequented places like this. Atton departed with the vigor of a condemned man given a chance at freedom. Kuryama chuckled to herself at his uncharacteristic discomfort.

Now the only question that remained was which of the redhead's scandalously revealing costumes was she to wear. She had a choice between several variations of the standard kerekini, a black net gown, and what seemed to be colorful strips of animal fur held together by thin cords.

Kuryama snorted; going naked somehow seemed more tasteful than wearing any one of those shameful outfits. But despite the depths to which she had sunk in the past, she still had standards.

Donning a black kerekini and the net gown, Kuryama left the dressing room.

* * *

Gelor Rabskah wrinkled his nose at the nightclub he had seen the Jedi enter. The place was filled with flashing light and crowds of people of several different species. Finding the Jedi in here was going to be difficult. The nature of the place blocked the Devaronian's limited Force perception, making tracking a Force sensitive through the Force nearly impossible even for an accomplished Force user.

Gelor was not an accomplished Force user. He had attended a Jedi Academy in his childhood, but dropped out in later years, turning to a freelance career of bounty-hunting and mercenary work. He had tried to make it into the Sith Academy on Korriban during the Jedi Civil War, but failed to make the cut. When Goto of the Exchange posted the bounty on all living Jedi, Gelor was among the first to enter the hunting field in pursuit of the elusive Jedi exile Kuryama Nari.

His limited Force powers had enabled him and a group of his companions to set the trap in Vogga the Hutt's base by blinding her Force perception. Now the Jedi was pulling the same trick on him; masking her Force signature with the raw passions of obsessed and drunken nightclub patrons.

It was infuriating.

She had been within his grasp. And then, at the last instant, slipped away, leading him on an exhausting chase across Nar Shaddaa and going back into hiding. It was an insult to his great hunting ability. He, Gelor Rabskah, who had raided a Republic Embassy and assassinated two important diplomats; he who had lifted the fortunes of powerful Hutt crime lords from under their bloated noses; he who had stolen a Sith Warship single-handedly - he had been thwarted by a broken Jedi rejected by the rest of the galaxy.

Gelor would have his revenge. He and his men would scour the building until they found the impudent Jedi.

As he and his companions moved to enter the seedy establishment, the muscular bouncer tried to block his way. "What d'you think you're doin'?" The guard asked.

Gelor leveled his blaster rifle at the guard's chest. "Get out of my way, I have no quarrel with you. Yet."

Scratching his head, the bouncer moved aside. "Alright, go ahead. They don't pay me to be a hero."

"Smart move," Gelor said as he and the other mercenaries brushed past the guard with his ill-fitting uniform.

Atton watched them disappear into the crowded kek bar with a mixture of relief and anxiety. They had been fooled by his disguise. Now the only way he'd know if Kuryama got busted was if she got hauled out the front door in force cuffs by the mercenaries. And then he'd have to answer to Kreia, that sick old witch. Wonderful.

The kek bar - the central dancing stage and cocktail bar - was only part of the club. The thickly clustered crowds around the bar thinned somewhat near the fringes, by the dining and pazaak tables. It was an almost perfectly circular chamber, flattened at the entrance and with alcoves along the outer wall for private sessions.

Gelor pushed his way through the thick crowds around the bar. The Devaronian had important things to do, and he didn't share the same morbid fascination with unclothed Twi'lek and Human females that seemed to occupy the male members of every other species in the galaxy. It was a pity his companions didn't share his detachment; in fact, they couldn't seem to stay focused and gawked at the dancers openly.

Among the crowd, Gelor caught not a single glimpse of gray Jedi robes that would signify he had found his prey. He signaled his men to fan out to cover the whole building and reduce the chances of the Jedi slipping out of his grasp. Is she was in here, he would find her.

He scanned the crowd as he nudged his way closer to bar, but no one stood out. On the stage a pair of Twi'leks in kerekinis were wrestling while a group of Human women in tight, shiny pants and with coiled power cables around their chests tramped about on the encircling bar.

Once again, Gelor was at a loss as to why such various states of undress among Human and Twi'lek females should so thoroughly occupy one's attention. He found nothing attractive about the naked female form; though he suspected this might be because he didn't find anything attractive. But nonetheless, the crowd around the bar was completely enraptured, and Gelor saw with fury that his men were well on their way towards being so.

Shaking his head in disgust, Gelor disregarded the other mercenaries; he didn't need them. He would catch the Jedi himself, without their help.

Generally satisfied that the Jedi was not in the central room, Gelor began a search of the back rooms. There wasn't much; only a couple of empty dressing rooms and maintenance areas. He did find one interesting thing, though: a passage under the main chamber that he assumed led to a door behind the kek bar.

All around, there were dancers. Many of them waiting for their shift, some coming off shift. They all looked so alike in such advanced stages of undress that they blurred together, becoming nearly indistinguishable from one another.

Gelor felt his temperature rising. None of this was helping him find the Jedi. He knew she was here - she had to be - but all he was finding were strippers. This wasn't the way it was supposed to have gone. The mercenaries he'd hired to help him had goofed up in Vogga's base, and sprang the trap too close to the exit, thereby allowing the Jedi to escape. Now he was in a sleazy nightclub surrounded by a hedonistic crowd salivating over naked dancers and no closer to catching the Jedi - farther, in fact.

As he grumbled to himself he failed notice a stripper in a black kerekini and net gown break from the line of dancers leaning against the wall and launch herself at him. She toppled him to the floor, sending his blaster rifle clattering against the wall. As he lay stunned on the ground, she kicked the side of his face with the steel-tipped heel of her high-heeled shoes, drawing blood.

Gelor was in such incredible pain he couldn't even see over the dizzying lights in his vision.

The stripper retrieved the fallen blaster rifle and hooked it under his neck, hauling him along by the head in a choke-hold to a maintenance room. After closing the door, she dumped him on the ground, where he gulped the polluted air gratefully.

Without warning, she smashed the rifle's stock against the elbow of his arm as he tried to stagger to his feet. The Devaronian screamed as his arm bones were dislocated and he collapsed back to the floor in agony.

"Gelor Rabskah," he heard the stripper say, and came to the sickening realization that she was not a stripper. The woman standing over him in less clothes than Hutt's dancing girl was exiled Jedi General Kuryama Nari. She had been hiding in plain sight and he had been stupid enough to be completely taken in by her deception.

Between wheezes of pain he managed to respond. "So you remember me."

Kuryama's vicious gaze, already hard as stone, turned harder still. He felt as if her glare alone was enough to reduce him to cinders. Lances of ice-cold hatred pierced her voice.

"I. Never. Forget." The words were an indictment, a judgment of who and what he was.

Gelor realized he was not going to be leaving this tiny room alive.

* * *

Atton was tired of playing the waiting game with the mercenaries. He'd been standing out in front of the nightclub pretending to be the club bouncer and watching every variety of depraved reprobate pass by him on their way into the club. He was getting restless, and worried of letting his guard down by accident. His fraying nerves certainly weren't making things easy on him.

He considered giving himself a break from being the doorman; after all, people here were supposed to be corrupt. It might look abnormal if he didn't shirk his 'job' at least once or twice. He sincerely doubted anyone would pay mind to the absence of the club bouncer at the door; especially since he and Kuryama had caused just such and absence earlier.

Turning to enter the club and buy himself a drink, Atton came face to face Kuryama who was coming to get him. Bafflingly, he found himself relieved that she wasn't naked - not that her particular choice of attire wasn't indecently revealing.

And she was liberally splashed from head to toe in Devaronian blood.

"What happened? Never mind, tell me later," he shouted over the din.

Kuryama said nothing, but indicated for him to follow her back into the club. Mystified, he followed her to the dressing where they had stashed the real club bouncer. She rummaged around in the drawers for bit until she found her gray robes and leather boots.

She tossed them to Atton. "Here. Carry these."

"Uh, if you don't mind my asking. Why can't you just _change back into them_?" Atton asked hopefully, though he wasn't sure if it was at the possible prospect of seeing her undressed or not having to carry her clothes.

"I've already taken my clothes off in front you. I think once is plenty. Besides, I'm not going to get that Devaronian's blood all over them. I need to get back to the _Hawk_ and take a couple showers first," she answered.

"You've gotten your robes bloody before..." Atton probed.

"Look, I'll explain later, when we get back to the _Hawk_. Now let's get out of here." Finally something cut and dried he could agree on. He'd had enough of hiding for his life in plain sight while Kuryama acted as strange as he had ever seen her act.

There was a mixed reaction when Kuryama and Atton got back to the _Ebon Hawk_.

"What the kek--? Wait, do I even want to know?" Mira asked incredulously when Kuryama appeared in the main hold, still dressed as a stripper and covered with blood.

Bao-Dur turned redder than a Sith's favorite color and went to repair a fully functional power conduit. The droids were indifferent. And Mical stood spluttering, unsure of of how to react.

Atton summed up their fiasco in a brilliantly concise and simplified explanation:"We ran into a little trouble."

"I sense unfinished conflicts were settled," Kreia remarked.

Kuryama nodded, explaining. "The meeting with Vogga was a trap. There was a Devaronian mercenary who was able to blind our Force perception so we never saw it coming. He and his men waited until we relinquished our weapons to Vogga's guards and then ambushed us. We were forced to extreme measures in order to escape."

"I see. But there was more to it, I feel," Kreia pursued.

"The Devaronian and I have crossed paths before, while I was in exile. I vowed to kill him and made good on that promise," Kuryama expounded.

"Uh, so why the stripper outfit?" This from Mira.

"Atton and I were hiding in a nightclub to counter the Devaronian's own limited Force perception. We had to disguise ourselves; I went as a dancer."

"I probably could have guessed that. What I really meant was why are you still 'disguised'?"

Kuryama heaved a sigh, letting go of her long-held feelings of loss, anguish, and animosity. "Mira, I don't think you'd understand if I spent an hour trying to explain. I'm not going to pollute my robes with his blood."

"Fair enough," Mira responded.

"If you'll excuse me then, I'm going to discard these clothes and take a shower."


End file.
